Maple Leaves, Fall
by fiesa
Summary: Nabi. Peace is an illusion. (This is what fall sounds like.) OneShot/Drabble collection- All characters.
**Maple Leaves, Fall**

 _Summary: Nabi. Peace is an illusion. (This is what fall sounds like.) OneShot/Drabble collection- All characters (except for Aru, Yeokyeong and Isana)_

 _Set: between Vol 12 and 15, with spoilers up to vol 19._

 _Warning: Fractured. Still trying to wrap my head around the events. Can't promise that my interpretation is correct._

 _Disclaimer: Standards apply._

 _Dedication: For those who took upon themselves the work to translate and summarize this manhwa for those who cannot read it otherwise – be it in pieces or completely. And for Garowyn._

 _A/N: I believe Sabu-Nim means "Teacher" in Korean and refers to Hong Howol, Ryu-Sang's and Myo-Un's teacher at the temple. French (official) translations translated the term to "Madame Sabu" whose English form ("Lady Sabu") I used before. For consistency, I kept it up here._

* * *

 _ **Prologue**_

This is what fall sounds like:

The raindrops, softly tapping onto the roof and the courtyard grounds.

The rustling leaves, slowly falling: _acer palmatum_ , five-fingered, pointed and in every shade of a brilliant red. (Of course, Ryu-Sang does not care for the botanical name. He learns it by osmosis, on Lady Sabu's insistence.) The harsh call of wild cranes, migrating South. Lady Sabu's steps as she walks through the yard, elegantly and measured, the rustling folds of her dress. Sister Dan-Ah humming softly while doing the laundry. Dol-Sae and the others bickering. The sounds of training and games and laughter, of children playing and living together in a precious temple at the end of the road.

It is the combination of these sounds, the memory of a fall in times long past. During a life when the temple was their home and their refuge, when there were no strangers on their door step and Lady Sabu would greet them with a smile every morning. When they would sit in the courtyard, watching her water her precious camellia, listen to her calm voice teach them about life.

For Ryu-Sang, all of this comes to his mind when he thinks of peace.

* * *

 _ **The Seer**_

Peace is an illusion.

Love is an illusion, as well, and so are friendship and kindness and hate. So-Ryu cannot remember a time when she has actually felt something real. Emotions, clear and confusing, would be a proof that she is alive. But there is nothing left in her anymore. She has lost everything: her childhood bled out and withered away with Ha-Rim, her faith was lost with Ha-Young, her hope fled alongside Ryu-Sang and her trust lay dying with Isana. So-Ryu hasn't believed in fairytales since her early childhood but she always believed in justice; now, even this has been taken away from her. The daughter of the Prime Minister Son died with Han-Ah, with Hong Sowol and with the expectations placed in her both by her parents and by herself. What remains is an empty shell that sees the future and dreams the past and watches, watches, _watches_ and never looks away.

 _Fact: Son So-Ryu can change the past, but she cannot defy destiny._

Her whole life, she has dreamed. There is not much a seer can do; it is like she is observing life passing by in front of her and she is unable to touch it. Unable to be a part of it: she will forever stand alone. So-Ryu, with her own reasons and circumstances, still will never be a part of the people around her no matter whether she wishes to or not. She cannot save anyone, she cannot be loved by anyone, she cannot know happiness and peace and ignorance. She is bound to see a person's fate before she gets to know the person and she cannot do anything.

Just watch, and dream.

And she tries to change the past, but destiny catches up with her again and again. Ryu-Sang is bound to search for Myo-Un, Ha-Rim will forever miss Han-Ah, Seong will love no one else than Gyeom and Isana will, even dying, push her aside. There is someone for everyone in this world, except for her. So-Ryu will forever be alone, a sleeping girl accompanied by the ghosts of her past and her future.

She is slowly descending into insanity, and she knows it.

Han-Ah called it, did she not? She was the one who told So-Ryu that nobody was born with only blessings. Both of them knew: people who solely lived in the past had no present, as people who constantly dreamed of the future lost themselves in those dreams. And this is what So-Ryu is: she is the shadow of a woman dreaming the dreams of a girl, and this, more than anything, will kill her.

She will disappear. She will be even less than air: she will never have existed.

For some time, she thought that Isana would be able to save her. Then, Ryu-Sang. But neither of them were willing to help her, neither one of them had been born for her. Not even Ha-Rim, who owed his life to her twice over, was hers. Instead, he belonged to Han-Ah, and if So-Ryu wouldn't love her first and only friend so much she would hate her from the bottom of her heart.

 _Ah._

Maybe she does hate the shaman girl.

Maybe So-Ryu hates Ha-Rim, and Myo-Un, and Ryu-Sang and Han-Ah and Isana. Maybe So-Ryu hates the entire world and all its inhabitants. Maybe So-Ryu hates everything and everyone, and most of all, she hates herself. It would explain so much.

She, very deliberately, does not think of her father.

 _They are all leaving you_ , the wind whispers, and So-Ryu dreams.

* * *

 _ **The Knight**_

Seong never used to dream of her before.

 _Blond hair, grim face. There were so many other girls in the Shaan tribe that were much more beautiful than her._

Gyeom really isn't anything remotely special. She has her grandfather's strict face and her mother's grey-blue eyes. She does not like housekeeping and sewing, and there are leaves caught in her hair constantly from her adventures in the forest. Her voice is too-loud. And yet, she mocks him in his sleep: her hands, her face, her voice. _Her eyes._ Her laugh when she threw herself into the mass of the oncoming attackers. The last flash of her dress, blue-and-grey matching her eyes, her golden hair: the colors of a starry night on the Hamat plains. Her sword, a whirling silver arc quickly dyed crimson. The color of maple leaves in fall. A last smile: quicksilver-lightning, sunshine-after-rain. Familiar, heartbreakingly so.

 _Oh, God._

Gyeom is beautiful when she smiles. Even when she stands there, a sword in her hand, blood on her cream skin and the ending clear in her eyes, she is beautiful. The last time he saw her she fell, gold and grey amidst the trees of the forest. The image burned itself into his heart.

 _Fact: Gyeom belongs onto the grassy plains of Hamat, underneath the endless, blue sky._

Seong will always remember her like that.

(He should have answered her, then.)

A memory: She smiled when they followed up the road towards the imperial palace. Gyeom smiled, and looked straight onwards. Her clothes were rumpled and smelled like horse and wind and the plains _._ Her hair was in disarray; they had travelled for days. She was a mess and yet all the picture-perfect ladies in their golden coaches with their beads and jewels and elaborate dresses seemed lifeless and unreal next to her.

It is a different kind of prettiness Gyeom possesses, something that seems to shine from within her and that makes it so, so hard to look away. Seong has to know, he has tried to look away for the past five years.

Gyeom smiled when they reached the palace's gates, and she was beautiful. Not special, not radiant. She was beautiful, and she is dead.

 _Do you know the consequences of your actions? Have you ever thought about them? No, you have not, because you never do._

She never did. She always acted the way that pleased her most, uncaring of the consequences, unaware of the backlash. She always, always, _always_ – No. The one time Seong was determined to make the most selfish decision in his life she stopped him, convinced him to think it through. Reminded him of his sisters, his family. And he is the one being unfair, blaming her only, but he is alive and _she is not_. It was not a decision she made by herself, even if it was mostly hers. Gyeom never was selfish enough to drag down the entire clan. Her existence in the palace accounted for it. And even now, with her actions, she has bought their clan precious time. The emperor is dead, the heir too young to assume power. Detestable men like Prime Minister Son Seok-Myeon would be vying for their part of the crown. It would grant the Shaan Clan enough time to disappear, to hide in the endless forests and plains and to build up their position. No, Gyeom's decision had not been selfish and stupid. She had sacrificed herself, loyal to the end, and the only thing Seong can blame her for and does blame her for is that she loved her clan more than she cared for him.

 _The one star that I cannot ever have._

 _Liar_ , he thinks, violently. _Liar, liar, liar. You promised. You promised!_

But Seong cannot remember whether it is Gyeom he means or whether the liar is him.

He should have taken her and run away. They should have just fled, leaving everything behind them, instead of following their duty (in Gyeom's case) and simply accepting her decision (in Seong's case). He should have forced her to come with him, through the forest and across the plains, far, far away until nobody could ever find them.

That's what he thinks, at least.

 _How am I supposed to live without you?_

* * *

 _ **The Priestess**_

She knows he will leave her.

She has waited for this moment her entire life, dreaded it like she only has dreaded Lady Sabu's final decision. She knows there will be nothing she can do.

So when the moment finally arrives, Myo-Un knows Ryu-Sang will walk away. This time, she has done something unforgivable. He leaves her in the rain and does not look back. The sound of the forest is alive around her, as real as the weight of the sword in her hand. _Familiar._ She tries to toss it away, but it won't leave. It returns to her again and again.

 _You are no better._

The blood is on her hands and it refuses to be cleaned off. Always was on her hands, even if she tried to forget. Ha-Young won't ever be Myo-Un, but there is nothing Ha-Young is that Myo-Un is not.

For the first time since their journey began, she has no place to go.

The knowledge is painful, and as real as the pain in her leg. Son Seok-Myeon and, in extension, Ha-Rim have taken away her home from her, but she still had part of her family. Now, she lost even the small part that had remained. By stopping Ryu-Sang from killing the one who murdered Lady Sabu, she has done something unforgivable. She should have regretted her actions, but the only thing she can think of is that at least Ryu-Sang hasn't killed again.

She does not pity So-Ryu. She does not fear for Ha-Rim. She just…

Myo-Un is just so tired.

 _Fact: Once upon a time, on a fateful afternoon a long, long time ago, Ryu-Sang became angry with her and hit her with a flower vase, and Myo-Un cannot remember a moment when this has not stood between them._

Now, there is more: she cannot imagine any way he will not hate her for what she has done. But she also cannot remember a moment when she has not loved him.

For such a long, long time she has been in love with him; has watched him train with the sword, has brought him food when he was being punished for brawling. Listened to his voice, hesitating and filled with annoyance, read her stories. For years, he was the one her eyes sought out as soon as she entered a room. It is so silly, really, a childish first love so full of the things unsaid that hover between them like an unbridgeable abyss since she can think and which none of them ever will be able to cross. Myo-Un's memory begins in the temple, and Ryu-Sang was her first friend. Only he never felt the same for her: he walked away when the distance between them became too small and their opinions clashed too quietly. He walked away without even listening to her explanation of why she had stopped him from killing Ha-Rim. Has he ever really listened to her, or was it her who just could not express herself? Myo-Un knows that a relationship can only exist when there are at least two sides: without him, there is no sense in being in love.

 _This relationship is over when I give up._

She has not been able to catch up on him, after all. Ryu-Sang leaves, and Myo-Un lets go.

The grass is cool. Rain runs down her face, saturates her clothes. But she cannot cry anymore. She loved Lady Sabu. She loved Ryu-Sang. And Lady Sabu is dead, and Ryu-Sang has left her, and where is the reward for being good, the praise for doing the right thing? Where is justice for the broken ones?

A voice: an echo. _I just want to be happy. Is that so wrong?_

 _Ah_ , she thinks. _Han-Ah. How I miss you_.

The next time she opens her eyes he is there. _A dream_ , she thinks. His hair is plastered to his face, his blue eyes are impenetrable. An illusion, she knows from the way he looks at her and despite everything, her heart gives a desperate, helpless lurch. _He came back._

 _This is a dream._

The next time she opens her eyes he is there. And they are not alone anymore: two strangers accompany them, and Ha-Rim.

And Ryu-Sang is _there_.

He does not tell her to follow him, but she does. When she stumbles on roots and uneven ground he waits, his back to her, his beautiful-ugly sword ready in his hands. They are a wrong match, a crooked collection of broken people: Ha-Rim, the lost one, Seong, so terribly empty, Ryu-Sang, silent in desperate grief. And Myo-Un, who follows because her love for Lady Sabu is equally strong as her love for Ryu-Sang, Aru and Yeokyeong. What a pathetic gathering, so desperately determined to return to Kailas. The pain in her leg has become familiar over the years, but that makes it no less agonizing.

 _Why are you doing this_?

The pouring rain has no answers. Myo-Un is too tired to argue. She just cannot seem to live without him, even if he does not need her. _(My blue sky.)_ Maybe Ryu-Sang thinks she will not survive without him. He always had an odd streak of responsibility, heavily hidden by acidic cynicism. Myo-Un does not want to be his responsibility.

Still, she follows him.

(She knows, deep down, that she always will.)

* * *

 _ **The Wanderer**_

The sky above is grey and cloudy and yet oddly beautiful. It is always when he is about to die that he realizes how much he loves being alive.

Once upon time Joo Ha-Rim ran away from the forge he had been sold to by his parents. It was night and the snow fell in light, soft flakes. He made it to the outskirts of the village. He had nothing except for the clothes on his bony frame and a piece of moldy bread he had stolen, and he knew it would not be enough to survive. Ha-Rim would have died that day: from exposure, from the cold, perhaps even from the hunger that had plagued him for months. Either thing could have killed him, then and there. Maybe he did indeed die: a child, frozen to death in the early hours before morning. Maybe everything he has seen from then, lived from then and dreamed from then had been just that: a dream.

The dream begins simple enough: with a girl that notices him, frozen and starved in the snow. And Ha-Rim, hungry and tired and so, so cold, follows her without any second thought.

It must be something in his appearance that always causes people to pick Ha-Rim up like stray cats because it happens a second time, years later. A different place, a different girl. Familiar snow, cold and wet, and yet so warm in the second between life and death, consciousness and unconsciousness. A warm (cool) gaze, a cold (warm) hand. A place at the table, a bowl of rice and hot tea, and the gazes might not be all kind and welcoming but the warmth is genuine. There are children in the temple and teenagers and adults, and there is something in the atmosphere that makes him want to weep even though he has no idea why. Maybe it is the memory of the girl's unsteady, limping steps as she carried him to the temple. And Ha-Rim, for the first time since forever, thinks-

 _Maybe I could stay here._

But history runs in circles and repeats itself over and over. If anyone, then he should know. Ha-Rim, once more, finds himself on his knees: a sword at his throat, the coldness of the ground biting into his skin. The sound of the maple trees and the rustling of the crimson leaves are deafening. Ryu-Sang's face is a mask of hatred. On the edge of their swords, the wind sings.

 _I thought maybe you could save me…_

No words – not even sound – just sight: Myo-Un stepping in between them. Broken fragments: a flash of steel as her sword meets Ryu-Sang's, the dry copper of blood matting blond hair, blackblack _black_ of cloth against snow-white skin. A piece of grey sky. A bird, fluttering skyward in panic. No sound, no words, only the white noise that might be the sound of his own, frantic heartbeat. Fighting in order to stay alive, is it not something worth living for? Ha-Rim closes his eyes and thinks of nothing.

 _I just wanted to see you again._

He does not die that day. It is futile, pathetic: he should have died a long, long time ago. Before he met So-Ryu, before Han-Ah died through his fault, before he killed So-Ryu's brother. Before he annihilated Myo-Un's family. Now it is her who saves him, again. So-Ryu was his Lady since he can remember, and he owed his life to her. Now he is indebted to both her and Myo-Un, and how is that possible in the first place? They are so inherently different women. So-Ryu saved him because she had nothing else on her hands once and because he saved her from her brother. Myo-Un saved him _twice_ because she _could_ , out of nothing more than the goodness of her heart. Does he owe her his life more than he owes it to So-Ryu? Does it count twice that she saved him twice? Is he obligated to her now, just as he is obligated to So-Ryu? Other than that, what had it been that had kept him in her house? The fact that he blames himself for Han-Ah's death? The fact that he killed So-Ryu's brother, even when it was to save her? Would it not be so much easier to serve Myo-Un?

Ha-Rim is too broken for illusions.

He sees Myo-Un looking at Ryu-Sang, and knows that even if she would look at him the same way, he would still not be able to give himself to her completely. He is disillusioned, just as So-Ryu is. Maybe that is why he loves Myo-Un – she is good, and strong, and kind – but he cannot love her _more_.

Joo Ha-Rim follows the woman that he owes his life to two times over.

And even though he owes her his life, there is nothing more to it. Seong's words are true: Myo-Un saved them, and he should be grateful. He _is_ grateful. But he cannot see her as his Lady.

Fact: Son So-Ryu saved him from certain death only to throw him to her father's mercy. She made him kill for her sake and yet did not acknowledge him. She knew how much Han-Ah meant to him and she would have seen the shaman girl's death, but she did nothing to prevent it. Son So-Ryu is a scheming, apathetic and cold woman who rather would put her hands in her lap and watch the world collapse than try to change it out of fear of – of what, actually? He does not know. Ha-Rim only knows that despite everything, he will return to her side. Maybe they are both broken the same way, and that is what draws him back in time and time again.

 _It would be easier_ , he thinks. _If only I could love you the same way I love her._

* * *

 _ **The Concubine**_

Gyeom does not think he was in love with her before.

(Before: before the Emperor's orders, before the journey across the plains of Hamat. Before the pirates. Before Them.)

She does not think she was in love with him after.

(After: after her instatement as Se-Bin, the Emperor's concubine, after Seong's return to the palace as ambassador of the Shaan Tribe. After the Emperor's assassination orders. After Them.)

Gyeom hates the emperor.

She hated him when he demanded the Shaan Tribe to send a hostage to the capital of his country. She hated him when she was chosen as hostage, and when she traveled all the way to his palace. She hates him while she sleeps in beds with silken sheets _(so cold)_ , hates him with every gift he gives his concubines, with every bit of affection he endows them with, regally, as if they should be grateful for him keeping them as his personal slaves. She hates him every time the bird that was a gift from him and which she sets free returns to the security of its cage, mocking her. She hates Jin Ka Yu, the Emperor of Su, when she hears a voice from the other side of the veil and realizes that he is ordering her clan to assassinate the king of Moon and that she is the thing in the palm of his hand that will make her tribe obey. Gyeom hates him with an intensity she never felt before, hates him with every fiber of her being and her soul when she recognizes the voice of the Shaan Tribe's ambassador and realizes why she has been ordered to attend this meeting. She hates him hates him _hates him_ with every part of her nonexistent heart.

 _(Because her heart is not with her anymore.)_

There are many things Gyeom learns in the palace. One of them is this: A caged bird will always sing. Sing beautifully, sing touchingly and make the listeners want to weep, but it will only sing of freedom. A free bird, in the meantime, will _fly_. But this is a lie, as well: freed birds might flee their cage and never return. But they might remain, as well, catching a brief glance of the sky and the heavens and then fly back to the cage they were raised in. _Safety and security over freedom_. Gyeom is neither a bird nor does she compare herself to one. She is just a girl from the Shaan tribe, just a hostage, merely a concubine. She can fight with a sword and can force her clan's hand and can carry pretty dresses and move gracefully and smile seductively. Gyeom the girl could throw a tantrum and challenge raiders and try to escape her fate. Gyeom the woman has learned that there are other ways of fighting and she has acquired them, even if they do not appeal to her. She has learned to use any weapon available to her, after all.

 _(Seong's voice is blindingly familiar. She knows it is him with earth-shaking certainty, even if she cannot see him. He does not know she is there but oh he is close so close and Gyeom cannot remember her own name anymore.)_

There are other ways of living than the ones they know from the tribe.

Seong does not understand. He wants her to quit, run away and hide and wait until the storm passes. It is clan tactics, age-old and prevailed. The tribes bow to power, always did: it was easier, it was safer. _One life for many._ It is the reason that Gyeom was sent to the castle in the first place. And she would never damn her family for their decision, but it does not have to be hers, as well.

 _Caged birds sing of freedom._

There is another world beyond the forest and plains of her home. She does not have to like it, but she accepts it. Sometimes, laying low does not yield the necessary results.

 _(Fact: and maybe she is the dumbest, luckiest assassin in history, and maybe she is no assassin at all but only the woman who claimed a victory for herself that was neither a victory nor a challenge in the first place. And maybe she could have survived by just laying low, but that is not the way she was and is and ever will be.)_

 _(And he knows it.)_

Gyeom will not allow her clan to be subdued by a crazy emperor and his illusion of eternity. She will not allow him to use the Shaan Tribe for his own schemes. She does not mind dying for her aim: she has stopped living a long time ago, either way. She can accept a world without her, a future without her in it. She can accept that the end for her will mean a future for the Shaan.

But neither the girl nor the woman Gyeom was and is and forever and never will be can accept a world without Seong in it.

 _(A star I will never have-)_

* * *

 _ **The Avenger**_

She always followed him, silently and without any complaints. Ryu-Sang knows: where he goes, she follows, no matter the circumstances and her condition. He does not need to turn around to know she is there.

Even in the midst of his dreams – those illusionary worlds of could-be's, would-have-been's and perhaps-and-what-if's the seer witch threw him in in her desperate search for something he had no idea of – he expected her to be just behind him. Those few steps away of which he never could determine whether they were respect (because she was just so stupidly polite) or fear (because she had every reason to be afraid of him) or merely due to her bad leg. But she was in no world he awoke in. Sometimes he found her – once as So-Ryu's maid servant, once as a shaman of the Hong family, once posing as a man for her family's sake – and sometimes, she just did not exist. It never stopped him from searching.

Her hand in his is so incredibly small.

 _Crazy_ , he thinks, so utterly, impossibly stupid, that these hands should have cut off a grown man's arm with nothing more but a rusty old knife.

Myo-Un is fragile, appears too weak to even lift a sword much less yield it. And yet he has seen her do it. There is no question that she was trained to fight, and that she fights well. It is just another facet of the girl he thought he knew inside out who always proves him wrong in the end. His mistakes have cost her dearly, and yet she never accused him of them. He has hurt her, been unkind to her, and has pushed her away time and again. And yet she does not hate him for it. It would have been, he thinks, the easiest way, but stubborn as she is she defies reason over and over and he hates her for it.

Ryu-Sang's life is constructed on lies.

There is a world built on his denial, his desperate attempts to block out what is right in front of him. Once upon a time, he jumped at the idea of every fight until the fight came to find him in the place where he thought he was safest. That was when he realized that no fight would only be between him and his opponent, but that the people in the temple would be affected, as well. Once upon a time, the Lady would send him on journeys and would make Myo-Un accompany him, and he would hate how she slowed him down, how he had to wait for her again and again and how having her with him also endangered her. In a way, his fights never were between him and the opponent but always about him, Myo-Un and his opponents, and he hated it.

 _No. Earlier than that._

Once upon a time he read stories he barely understood himself to a girl that wouldn't wake up. And he hated the way she would not react at first and then, later on, how she would fall asleep so easily. Hated the silence in the room, the sound of her breathing and the soft scent of camellia from the gardens. Hated the fact that she never became angry, no matter how cruel he was, that she always smiled at him, that she was better with the sword than him. Ryu-Sang hated the girl that was Myo-Un.

 _Fact: this is a lie._

(Only bad kids lie.)

 _Paradox: this is the truth._

Ryu-Sang always honored truth over anything. How did it happen that he became the one to hide behind half-truths? Once upon a time, he lashed out at the idea of not having been told the truth and the memory of that day – the red blood slowly mixing with the water, her soft sobbing – and the consequences come back to haunt him again and again.

Where do you go when everything you have lived for is in pieces?

 _(Myo-Un, so still and quiet on the stairs to that huge, empty house, her black hair spread out around her like a halo, and the thin, almost invisible trickle of blood running down her chin and disappearing on the age-darkened wood underneath her.)_

He should be thankful that crazy fortune teller bitch tried to alter the past for him.

Ryu-Sang is a _soldier/hostage/murderer_ in a world that leaves no place for the weak. He is an orphan, grown up in Hong Sowol's temple in Moon country. He is a bastard son, again and again, but no matter whom So-Ryu makes out of him in her desperate attempts to keep him with her, one thing always remains the same. Strange how simple it is, and, at the same time, how complicated. Strange how anything he does leads him back, like he is walking in circles. How he, no matter where _(when)_ he awakens, always knows whether Myo-Un exists or not, like a heavy, blinding ache deep within him. It is like she is a part of him to an extent that makes him want to tear out his own heart when he awakens in another one of that bitches' crazy worlds where he is one of her mindless minions and Myo-Un does not exist. And then he awakens from his dreams and realizes she is _alive,_ and _real,_ and yet still something he _cannot have_.

There is no place he can run to that is far enough to separate himself from the girl with the ebony hair and the snow-white skin.

 _Why can't you be mine?_

The image of the mad seer rages in a terribly parody of his own thoughts.

* * *

 _ **Epilogue**_

Rain falls, endlessly.

The brilliantly red leaves are on the ground, crushed by the rain and by many feet. The heavy scent of wet earth mingles with the sound of the falling sheets of rain. Ryu-Sang's voice is unsteady, stumbling over the words he does not know. Sometimes, he makes them up rather than figuring them out and cripples the meaning of the entire story. But his voice is familiar, and so is the sound of the rain. Outside, voices can be heard, far away and yet so close. Noise from the kitchens, copper pots and wooden spoons and porcelain bowls. Wood meeting wood in the courtyard, where the afternoon sparring lessons are taking place. Children's laughter dances on the wind.

It is the combination of these sounds, the memory of a fall in long ago. During a time when the temple was their home and their refuge, when they would learn and train and live together and Lady Sabu's smile would be enveloping and warm. When Ryu-Sang would read her stories and she would fall asleep, feeling safe.

For Myo-Un, all of this comes to her mind when she thinks of peace.

This is what fall sounds like.


End file.
